The Home Phoneline Networking Alliance (HomePNA) has developed a networking standard that allows HomePNA network devices to communicate over telephone lines in a home, without disturbing the existing voice, fax or ADSL (asynchronous digital subscriber line) services. There have been multiple versions of the standard, with version 3 (v3) being the most recent.
There have been attempts to adapt the HomePNA standard to also operate over coaxial lines (also known as “coax” lines), such as are commonly utilized for data services, such as cable television and cable data services. U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/000,524, filed Dec. 1, 2004 and assigned to the common assignee of the present invention, describes generally how to extend the HomePNA v3 standard to operate over a hybrid network of telephone and coax lines.
One problem with a network on the coax lines is that, while the coax data services operate at higher frequencies than voice and ADSL services, they operate in similar ranges to that of HomePNA (which is 4-20 MHz), making it difficult to operate an HomePNA network on coax lines at the same time that other data services operate. VDSL (very high rate digital subscriber line) services may occur between 0.1 and 12 MHz but may be extended, in the VDSL 2 standard, to close to 30 MHz. Cable television may begin at 54 MHz.